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Form Design Tips - Field naming

Modified on: Tue, 20 Nov, 2018 at 2:40 PM

When designing your form and setting the name of a field becomes an important first step because it potential determines how your field will be accessed later. Therefore, setting a field name that makes sense initially will reduce ambiguity and more work later. Here are some form design tips when field naming:

1. Name by field "groups" or "areas"

As you look at a form, most fields can be categorized into groups, usually based on where they are located in proximity to each other. For instance, a form

For instance, an area of your form might need to look like this:

In this case, the fields under "Buyer" should be grouped as the "Buyer" group; and fields under "Seller" should be grouped as the "Seller" group.

When naming fields for these groups, we recommend the following format:

BuyerLabel

SellerLabel

BuyerName

SellerName

BuyerAddress

SellerAddress

BuyerPhone

SellerPhone

Note that the left-most text in the field name is the group and the right-most text is the field. You could continue to keep this formatting rule to identify field names such as the following if the above example required more detail:

BuyerLabel

SellerLabel

BuyerNameFirst

SellerNameFirst

BuyerNameLast

SellerNameLast

BuyerAddressStreet

SellerAddressStreet

BuyerAddressCity

SellerAddressCity

BuyerAddressZip

SellerAddressZip

BuyerPhone

SellerPhone

...

Naming fields in this format makes it very easy to identify what the field is referring to.

2. Handling sequential fields (such as checklists)

In some scenarios, a list of questions or checklists may need to be added, such as the following:

Note the hierarchy of groups and subgroups apparent on the form layout. Based upon this, following field naming might be ideal:

StEngLabel

StEngActiveEngLabel

StEngStTalkLabel

StEngActiveEngQ_1

StEngStTalkQ_1

StEngActiveEngQ_2

StEngStTalkQ_2

StEngActiveEngQ_3

StEngStTalkQ_3

StEngActiveEngQ_4

StEngStTalkQ_4

StEngActiveEngQ_5

StEngActiveEngQ_6

StEngActiveEngQ_7

StEngActiveEngQ_8

In regards to aiding scripting and handling potential field calculations, consider reviewing the following article as well: